Alleviate Stuckness with this Brain Cocktail—PART 1

Neurotransmitters to tap into for flourishing...

At Funmentum Labs, we’ve been using fun to help groups accomplish seemingly impossible tasks - such as aligning on a marketing campaign in 2 weeks instead of 3 months. So we’ve gotten curious about - what exactly is happening in our brains that helps our methods work so well? Turns out there are key neurotransmitters activated when we are having productive fun at work. I’m going to highlight our top 3 over the next 3 weeks, with the negative work states that they can help alleviate.

#1: Stuckness → Dopamine

We’ve all been there. You are facing a big task coming up, you know that you need to do it, I mean you set aside this time right here to do it! Or maybe you’re in the middle of working on it, but you can’t seem to focus. Why do you keep finding yourself checking your phone, or your email, or scheduling that dentist appointment—anything that’s not doing the task? You are STUCK.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that the pressure to be perfect is paralyzing. You’re trying to write the perfect sentence on the first try. You want to just methodically work out that presentation one slide to the next and then be done. But it’s taking a really long time.

Something to try to counteract it: do it really bad!

• If you’ve hung around me long enough, you’ve probably heard me say “just do bad ideas to start your brainstorm”. This is a similar idea, but in this case, it’s not about straight ideation - it’s more about completing a big, scary project. Like designing a strategy deck or writing a proposal.

• Here’s the key thing - set a timer for 20 minutes, and see if you can bust out the entire thing extremely poorly.

  • Write paragraphs that are way too long, with bad grammar

  • Move boxes around on google slides like a madman, let them look terrible

  • You should be saying to yourself “wow this is so bad, I’m really overdoing this right now”. You should be almost giggling at how bad it is.

  • Just GO GO GO GO

That activation energy of just getting *anything* going starts to release dopamine into your system. All of a sudden you are having little wins everywhere—and dopamine is known as the “little win” hormone.

When you’re not worried about sounding perfect, you start having more insights and surprising yourself. Sure 2/3 of your work is garbage that you will cut, but the other 1/3 is often more interesting than if you tried to painstakingly force yourself to do it “straight”.

Instead of the dopamine being used to distract you, with cravings of phone time, the dopamine is keeping you locked in on what you’re doing.

After your timer goes off, take a break, and come back to the madness that you just created. Guess what? It’s much easier to put the puzzle pieces together now into the actual great piece of work. And you got it done faster than you otherwise would have the normal way.

Wrap-Up: The Brain Cocktail (Part 1)

When you or your team are stuck—how can you get dopamine flowing through your brains? Thinking in terms of the brain chemicals is kind of funny, but it also is a helpful lens to inspire new behavior in yourself and others. Hat tip to Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas - the brain cocktail is drawn from their book Humor, Seriously. A truly excellent read about the power of humor in the workplace. If you made it all the way down here you will love it!

Stay tuned! Over the next 2 weeks we’ll highlight the other 2 key ingredients to the brain cocktail, to alleviate isolation and burnout. Hit the subscribe button to not miss out.

Thanks,

Devin

p.s. We keep the lights on at Funmentum Labs by running team off-sites. Just keep it in the back of your mind for now… and then when it’s time, let me know.